Joseph DiGiorgio was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1931, the son of Italian immigrants. During the 1950s he studied at Cooper Union in New York City and with Hans Hofmann in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Although he did not have his first solo show in New York until 1975, his work had been exhibited widely and steadily elsewhere, beginning in the late 1950s.

He was perhaps best known for a series of two hundred paintings he made of Prospect Park in Brooklyn, fifty for each season. His work is represented in public, private, and corporate collections all over the country, including that of the Morris Museum of Art. Joseph DiGiorgio died in New York City in 2000.